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By Chris Becker Yet another mixed night on Wall Street as stocks pushed between concern and confidence as they weigh up the direction of the Fed in next week’s meeting. The potential for a trade war – if not a Cold War – is being weighed up as gold and the majors fell on the

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By Leith van Onselen If you want a textbook example of how desperate the ‘growth lobby’ has become in its support of mass immigration and a ‘Big Australia’, look no further than Andrew Markus’ disparaging remarks about the Australian Population Research Institute’s (APRI) recent survey showing that nearly three-quarters of Australian voters believe Australia already

By Leith van Onselen The Australian Bureau of Statistics yesterday released its overseas short-term arrivals and departures figures for January, which continued to show a trend rise in the number of inbound visitors, with Chinese arrivals continuing to boom. The number of short-term visitor arrivals fell a seasonal 30.5% in January in original terms, whereas

Via Domainfax: A concentration of underpaid workers has been uncovered in western Sydney, with almost two- thirds of businesses audited found to be seriously short-changing workers or failing to keep proper pay records. The Fair Work Ombudsman investigation found that 64 per cent of almost 200 businesses audited were breaching workplace laws in suburbs including

DXY jumped last night: AUD fell across the board: Gold was hit: Brent was firm: Base metals fell: Big miners too: And EM stocks: Junk was flat: Treasury yields broke out at the short end but the curve dropped sharply: Same for bunds: Stocks firmed: Yesterday I mulled the history of Larry Kudlow and his

Via the AFR: Low-income retirees caught by Labor’s plan to scrap cash refunds for excess dividend imputation credits could be compensated by other opposition policy measures – possibly including changes to the deeming rate, which is used to determine the level of a pension based on the income from assets. …Speculation is rife that Labor

Via the Atlantic comes a superb analysis of America’s version of the Fake Left and its supporters. You could basically just run through and change “America” for “Australia” in this and you;d be exactly right. A must read: Over the past 40 or so years, the U.S. has been fragmenting into two parallel societies, which

The trend lower in house prices has softened in recent weeks: Leading indicators don’t suggest any kind of rebound in the offing but one wonders if the following is why we’ve seen a slowing melt, via the AFR: A record $5 billion worth of mortgages sold in the December quarter of 2017 fell outside APRA’s

By Leith van Onselen The deflation of Sydney’s housing market has continued for the 27th consecutive week, with CoreLogic’s dwelling values index registering another 0.09% decline, and values down a cumulative 4.1% over that 27-week period, and dwelling values also down 4.0% over the past 32 weeks: Sydney’s quarterly growth rate remains firmly negative, down

By Leith van Onselen In the week ended 15 March 2018, the CoreLogic 5-city daily dwelling price index, which covers the five major capital city markets, fell another 0.03%: Values fell in Sydney and Adelaide, but rose elsewhere: So far in March, dwelling values are down 0.10%, driven by Sydney: So far in 2018, dwelling

By Gareth Aird, senior economist at CBA: Key Points: General government consumption growth has materially outpaced household consumption growth over the past three years. Public sector jobs growth has significantly outpaced private sector jobs growth over the past two years. Public sector wages have been growing at a faster pace than private sector wages for

A mixed day here in Asia with most stock markets putting in scratch sessions following the poor lead overnight from Wall Street. The White House is getting a new economic advisor – Larry “I’m never right really” Kudlow, so that should work out fine. US stocks are facing their fourth night of losses if confidence

Retail carnage is mushrooming, via Domainfax: News broke overnight Australia time that Toys ‘R’ Us was preparing to sell or close all 885 stores in the US after failing to reach a deal to restructure billions of dollars of debt. The Wall Street Journal reported that chief executive David Brandon told staff the company would likely liquidate stores

By Leith van Onselen I have always found it irritating when interest groups like the Business Council of Australia complain about Australia’s uncompetitive wages and the need to cut penalty rates or the minimum wage, as well as slash company taxes, but conveniently refuse to address the egregious blow-out in CEO and senior management pay.

From the RBA: Abstract The Reserve Bank has begun using a new full-system macroeconomic model called MARTIN in policy analysis and forecasting. It is designed to be used as part of the Bank’s existing processes for forecasting and analysis, which use a range of information, models and staff assessments. MARTIN is already being used in

By Leith van Onselen The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released visitor arrivals and departures data for the month of January, which registered a big lift in net annual permanent and long-term arrivals. In the year to January 2018, there were 787,710 permanent and long-term arrivals into Australia – up 5% from January 2017

Via the ABC: The first witness to appear today is CBA’s executive general manager of home buying, Daniel Huggins. Under questioning from the commission’s senior counsel, Rowena Orr QC, Mr Huggins acknowledged there was a conflict of interest created by the commission payments banks make to mortgage brokers. “The larger the loan, the larger the

Another one bites the dust: Macquarie’s economics team of Justin Fabo and Ric Deverell say they now expect the RBA to remain on hold until early 2019. While the economy is improving, the unemployment rate remains too high, and wages and price inflation too low for the 25 basis points of rate hikes pencilled in for August and November

From immigration extremist Peter Martin today: It’s great that we are talking about immigration. But could we talk about immigrants as well? …To conduct the debate as the ABC did on both Four Corners and Q&A on Monday night, as if it was only about us, leaves out half the picture. People come here to

By Leith van Onselen Statistics New Zealand has released national accounts figures for the December quarter of 2017, with Gross domestic product (GDP) rising by 0.6% over the quarter to be up 2.9% year-on-year. GDP per capita rose by 0.1% in the September quarter and by a soggy 0.7% year-on-year – the lowest per capita

By Leith van Onselen Earlier this month, it was suggested that the wheels were falling off Canada’s biggest housing market – Toronto- with the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) reporting that house sales had fallen by around a third year-on-year in the Greater Toronto area, with average sales prices for all dwelling types also down

By Leith van Onselen The restaurant and catering industry association has backed the National Retail Association’s (NRA) call for the minimum wage to be left unchanged in 2018, claiming in its submission to the Fair Work Commission (FWC) that an increase in the minimum wage cannot be justified given the current economic conditions. From The

By Leith van Onselen In the lead-up to last year’s September general election, I praised New Zealand Labour’s housing platform because it promised to address both supply and demand distortions via negative gearing reform, banning foreign buyers of existing homes, tighter capital gains taxes, removal of urban growth boundaries, plus bond financing for infrastructure. I

By Chris Becker Last night saw continued withdrawal of buying confidence this time with economic news actually having an impact as US advanced retail sales surprised to the downside. US stocks led the charge down with the Dow off 1% but commodities recovered on the Chinese retail sales/FAI/production figures yesterday. Risk markets are waiting patiently for

Via the WSJ: President Donald Trump has offered Lawrence Kudlow the job as director of the National Economic Council and he accepted, making the economic commentator one of the president’s top economic advisers, Mr. Kudlow said in an interview. We’ve all watched Kudlow for years on CNBC spout his supply-side Reaganomics drivel. Calculated Risk records

By Leith van Onselen The debate continued yesterday over Labor’s pledge to abolish cash refunds of excess franking credits from 1 July 2019 if Labor wins the next federal election, thereby saving the budget $5.6 billion in the first full year, rising to $8 billion a year over the medium term. The Australia Institute’s (TAI)

Karen Moley is worried: It’s still early days, but if I were a senior bank executive or even a bank shareholder, I’d be feeling distinctly nervous about where the Hayne royal commission will end up on the crucial issue of how much responsibility home loan borrowers should shoulder when they’ve knowingly provided false information to